Exit polls tip Koizumi landslide

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Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's party is headed for
a landslide victory in today's election for parliament's lower
house, TV exit polls showed.

They point to a stunning win that will tighten the US ally's
grip on power and give him a broad mandate for reform.

An exit poll by public broadcaster NHK showed that the Liberal
Democratic Party, which has been governing in coalition, would win
between 285 and 325 seats in the 480-seat chamber.

NHK's findings were broadly in line with those of private
broadcasters including TBS, which forecast the LDP would win
between 298 and 313 seats.

That would be a striking victory for Koizumi, a media-savvy
maverick who gambled his career in a populist appeal to voters to
back his plan to privatise Japan's vast postal system and its
savings bank and insurance businesses.

NHK also forecast that the LDP and its partner, the New Komeito
party, would win a combined total of between 313 and 361 seats,
allowing them to completely dominate the powerful lower
chamber.

Koizumi called the election after rebels in the LDP helped the
opposition defeat bills in the upper house to privatise the postal
system, a financial industry giant with $US3 trillion ($A3.94
trillion) in assets.